pathetically plain recipe for Penne Pomodoro

Aahh... Pasta! Good old student’s food. Well, I wouldn’t know I’ve stayed with my parents throughout my university period and had my mom cooking :) But I’ve heard stories. And dreadful ones, I kid you not. So, horrors aside, what can be done for a pasta to rectify its not-so-glamorous name? Well... easy :) Here’s a dish that will not make you break the sweat but you’d still be able to impress many a woman/man should you desire so. Impress in vain though as it comes with unholly amounts of garlic :>
So, what we need is:

- penne pasta
- olive oil
- fresh cherry or plum tomatoes
- garlic
- optionally some chilli flakes and/or parmesan cheese

Start with cooking your pasta, and when it’s ready pour over cold water (to cool it down and stop cooking) and set aside. Now halve or quarter your tomatoes and finely chop some garlic (at least 2 cloves per portion :> ). When these are ready heat up some oil in wok (best) or deep frying pan and add tomatoes. Be careful, it’s gonna splash hot oil all over! When tomatoes start letting the juice out and go visibly soft add your garlic and stir for about 2 minutes. If you’re using it then it’s a good time to put in chilli flakes as well (or chilli oil for that matter...). And then just add the pasta, cook until hot. At this point the dish is ready to serve but if you’re not convinced that this is sophisticated enough and are desperate to add a little something that would make all the difference then invest in some shaved parmesan (looks better than grated) and fresh basil or wild rocket. Serve with wine and odour killing candles...

hurry-me-not Lecso for hungry Hungarian Huns

So... when you're riding through Panonian plains, as you do, waving around your sabre and grooming your mustache it's perfectly reasonable to grow some peppers on the way.

Apparently.

Makes no sense? Well, that's Hungarian cuisine for you :) And one of it's best creations ever is lecso, a dish as simple as Jeremy Clarkson's cultural needs and at the same time as delicious as Scarlett Johansson in the opening sequence of Lost in Translation. Just more spicy. And red.
Amazingly short list of ingredients consists of:

- peppers (red or yellow, although red give the dish consistency of colour)
- onions
- tomatoes
- sausage
- olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika

There are recipes which would list lard or bacon as well, but it's much better not to go too rich here so I'm going to leave it out of the equation.Start with chopping (finely) the onions and peppers (seeds've got to go!). Pour some olive oil in a deep frying pan or wide-ish cooking pan and add the onions and peppers. put on a small fire, cover and take a break. DO NOT perform breaks a la Keith Floyd or you're not gonna last long enough to see the onions going soft! But if you're still sober then let's prepare the rest of the ingredients. Tomatoes - easy. If you can be bothered then get some fresh ones, put them in some boiling water for about 3 min, and cool down. Now the skin should peel easily and if you squeeze them you'd be also able to get rid of the seeds. Then you can chop them a bit and add to the pan.  But if, on the other hand, you cannot be bothered then just add some canned ones. And again, let it cook while, at the same time, you can prepare the last ingredient - ze sausage. Here's a little twist in the tale though. Forget your normal supermarket or even butcher's sausages as they simply won't do.  What you need is a proper smoked and cured stuff like Polish Wiejska (vee-ei-ska) which you can get at the deli counter in some supermarkets. It's pure meat with no fat and bloody delicious as well. It's necessary though to remove skin before slicing. Sausage needs to be cut into 0.5-1 cm thick half- or even quarter-slices and then just added to the veg in the pan. Once all members of the Lecso family are cuddling together on a low heat we add a big serving of sweet red paprika (spice and seasoning section in any supermarket) a little bit of salt and pepper and if you like it spicy some cayenne pepper or Tabasco sauce to your liking. I'd recommend a generous handful of marjoram as well (again, supermarkets) which is not an orthodox ingredient here, but it just goes perfectly well together. And that's pretty much it. Now you can cook it as long as you wish but no shorter than an hour. Serve with rice and send me compliments :)

desperate pork in oriental disguise

Things started to get desperate when I decided to do something more of an extraordinary without planning an appropriate shopping first. So there I was with:

• - one tenderloin of pork
  
• - handful of small mushrooms
  
• - cherry tomatoes
  
• - two carrots
  
• - red onion
  
• - asparagus
  

The whole original idea was pretty much about tossing it all into a wok, adding some rice and cooking until bored. And that’s why I went desperate.

This called for some desperate measures.

First, I’ve decided to marinade my pork a little bit in something that turned out to be a slightly Frankenstein-ish all-oriental sauce. I’ve added:

• - honey
  
• - mustard (the best one is from IKEA food shop!)
  
• - sweet chilli sauce
  
• - tiny bit of Heinz ketchup
  
• - soy sauce
  
• - a bit of Vegeta seasoning
  
• - a bit of Maggi
  
• - a bit of Morrisons’ thai wok oil
  
• - a bit of Morrisons’ sechuan wok oil
  
• - ...and maybe some things I can’t remember anymore
  

Anyway, the ingredients for this marinade were absolutely incidental (happened to be passing by when I was frantically roaming round the kitchen in hopeless search for inspiration) and should only be treated as guidance. After all it’s just one of those dishes that happen to happen out of nowhere and which we can never do again because we couldn’t be bothered to write down what we’ve had used in a first place. So here it is, a first timer. 

So, as for preparation, nothing easier than that. First, cut the meat into very thin slices or little stripes and mix well with the marinade, then set aside. Pretend you’ve lost interest, act inconspicuous, let it rest in pieces. It’ll fry happier.

Now chop the onion into recognisable bits, half- or just slice carrot(s), quarter the mushrooms and chop asparagus (say into 3-4 cm bits). Into the wok the whole lot, with a little bit of added water and under a cover. On a rather little fire. Start preparing (or prepare it earlier altogether) your rice. Time to go back to the pork (the longer it marinades the better but there’s no need to go over the top either :) All it needs is to be put in a little bit of flour and deep (or half deep) fried in some nice oil i.e. grape seed or sunflower. Avoid the nasty regular vegetable oil, the one which can be used after cooking for fuelling diesel engines. It may be a wonderful way of recycling but somehow does not wet my appetite much. 

Oh, and it gives you cancer as well.

Once fried, drain the meat on a paper kitchen towel and go back to you rice and veg. When they cooked but still crunchy add halved cherry tomatoes (plum as good, or just normal ones chopped) and cook for another 3-5 min and then stir in the rice. Keep on low fire until sure that everything is well mixed and hot, turn the heat off and add the pork (which should be covered in a nice, crunchy batter). Mix and serve. I’ve added as well a handful of wild rocket leaves and some fresh coriander but that’s (as everything else in this dish) is purely optional. Just remember not to cook your greens and fresh herbs since in heat they lose flavour faster than Gordon Ramsay patience.

At which point I must warn you – it’s not a looker, but then again it’s quick, not expensive, dead simple and quite not bad after all :)

(I mean the dish, not Gordon...)

Bon apetito!